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Google wants to compete with Windows Mobile

The world's biggest mobile phone conference is underway in Barcelona. This year, Google announced an
upcoming solution for the internet on mobile phones. Android aimed to compete with Microsoft's Windows Mobile. (Story: M.-N. Bauer)

No longer content just to use their mobiles to make a few calls and to send some text messages, consumers now want to use it to surf the internet with as little fuss as possible.

The mobile World Congress in Barcelona offered a glimpse of what the future might have in store for a market now estimated to cost over 3 billion euros.

Perhaps surprisingly the most intriguing offering didn't come from a traditional mobile operator but from the world's leading search engine Google which showcased its prototype handsets for a new mobile operating system, called Android.

"In the end I think that for consumers that's going to mean a lot more choice, more innovation and we're just happy that the industry seems to be embracing those principles.", explains Rich Miner, group manager, Mobile platform for Google. Yet Google's appearance on the market hasn't delighted everyone.

With Vodaphone issuing a strong warning to fellow mobile operators saying that they needed to improve the mobile internet experience dramatically or lose out to Google or Facebook.

With competition and regulatory action lowering mobile phone costs in many countries the more is more ethos seems to be the only way these operators will escape becoming obsolete.